CMPM25
quad view
3D viewport quad view is toggled by hitting the spacebar. Whichever view the cursor is over when you hit it again, that view will become the new full screen.
three-point lighting
A common arrangement using three directions of light on a scene: from behind the subjects (backlighting), from one bright source (key light), and from a less bright source balancing the key light (remove dark areas)(fill light).
Workspaces
A useful way to customize the interface is to use the Workspaces pull-down menu in the top right handcorner of the interface; its default is Maya Classic, and you can do everything in that for simple scenes.
Subtractive
Absorb specific wavelength of color. When all are added they produce black. CMYK
The Hotbox
Accessed by holding down the spacebar, which brings up the menus for the applications, such as File, Edit, Create, etc.
Additive
All the colors add up to white. RGB
NURBS patches
Always four sided. So closed and open surfaces will always have a seam.
lambert
Brightness due to diffuse reflection
CV curves
CV stands for Control Vertex, the points of the mesh-like arrangement that define a NURBS curve. The CV Curve tool is used to place control vertices (usually in an orthogonal view) to build up an interpolated curve; the curve doesn't appear until the fourth point is placed because of the nature of the mathematics.
shaders
Calculate material appearance from the angels of faces to the camera, lighting, color, specularity, etc.
Editors
Channel/Layer editor, the Modeling toolkit, and the Attribute editor. Outliner, an be accessed by clicking on the icon below the Window Layout tools
textures
Diffuse- affects the color of the rendered object Specular- affects the shininess Glow- makes parts of the object appear to emit light Bump or normal- appears to add fine detail Displacement- moves moves the geometry along the normal to the face Procedural- applies a non-repeating math transformation to the surface of the object
Selection Tools
Direct selection tool and its key shortcut is Q. Lasso tool: this selects items by drawing a line around or through them. Below that again is the Paint selection tool, which selects items by painting over them. Holding down the Control key removes newly selected items.
Navigation in the 3D window
Holding the alt or command, if you left-click and move your mouse up and down, the scene in the view port rotates around a horizontal axis; moving left or right, a vertical axis. Holding down the Alt or Command key and right-click, we dolly the camera (physically moving the camera, not zooming the lens) scrolling the mouse wheel also does this. If you hold down Alt or Command and middle-click, you pan the scene. The time slider allows us to move through the animation that you have defined; it is controlled by a range slider.
polygon models
However, polygonal models are faceted - that is, they're made up of flat surfaces. They don't have a real curvature and so are not suitable for defining smooth curved surfaces.
Components and selection
In a polygonal model, the components are vertices, edges, and faces. In a NURBS model, they are surfaces. To see the components of an object, select it and then right-click over it to show them.
Combining and separating meshes
Make two (or more) polygonal objects and shift select them. Then use the Mesh - Combine command from the Menu line The objects will select as one item. To separate them use the Separate command, which is next to Combine.
The Marking Menus
Marking menu contents are specific to the type of object currently selected (if there is more than one selected, it refers to the last one) Accessed by right clicking anywhere in the scene. They allow you to access component (subobject) levels for the selected object as well as change many of its properties. If nothing is selected, right clicking provides two options: to finish using the current tool or to select everything in the scene.
component mode
Maya's term for subobject elements such as faces and vertices
transform tools
Move, Rotate, and Scale commands common to all 3D applications. Rotate and Scale take place around the object's pivot point with Move it doesn't matter where the pivot point is.
Object soft selection
Object soft selection does the same as global, but this time doesn't change their structure. Each object looks the same as it did before, just their locations change.
Bezier curves
The Bezier Curve tool is very different, however. It works identically to the Pen tools in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, using clicks to define sharp corners and click-drags to define points on a curve. Interactive handles control the direction and strength of influence of the points.
EP curves
The EP Curve tool is simply another way to input a curve; the result will be still be a CV curve. As you lay down points the curve will appear after the third point but now it will pass directly through all the points you have entered - rather like the Pen tool in Illustrator. So this is a much more intuitive way to create a NURBS curve.
Three point and Two point circular arcs
The Two and Three Point Circular Arc tools are simple ways of creating arcs using two and three input points
Viewport menus
The View drop-down menu controls camera settings and what is seen in the viewport Shading controls how objects are shown in the viewport Lighting how they are lit Show what appears.
Naming objects
The initial letter is to allow more important objects in the scene to be at the top of alphabetically sorted lists.
depth of field
The range of distances from the image plane that are in sharp focus
Boolean operations
There are three Boolean operations in 3D modeling: Union (adding two meshes and deleting the common volume), Subtract (removing the overlap of one object from another), and Intersection (where only the common volume remains). In all three the order of selection matters. For both Union and Intersection, the last item selected will have its name and history preserved. In Subtract, the last item selected will also have its overlapping volume removed from the previous one and then disappear.
NURBS and subdivision surfaces
These look similar, but are diff. Subdivs are one seamless surfaces but a NURBS model is often made up of many patches Subdivs cannot have surface curvatures precisely defined but NURBs can. Subdivs are an iterative process while NURBS are precise. Uses: Use poly models for animation and 3d printing NURBS for manufacturing and surface analysis
Volume soft selection
This moves, rotates, or scales a subobject selection based on the falloff radius and type. The selection can be vertices, edges, or faces and the falloff is based on a 3D volume of a sphere positioned at the center of the region of influence.
Global soft selection
This selects all the objects within the falloff radius (more or less, depending on their distance from the original selection) and changes not only their location but their structure on a vertex basis.
Surface soft selection
This selects all the objects within the falloff radius (more or less, depending on their distance from the original selection) and moves/distorts them on a vertex level. When the Falloff Mode is set to Surface, the falloff is based on a circular region that conforms to the contours of the surface. Surface mode is useful when you want the Soft Selection falloff to conform to a surface. For example, you can separate the upper lip from the bottom lip on a characters face using the surface-based falloff mode.
Pencil curves
This tool is freeform: you draw a shape, which when complete becomes a high resolution CV curve.
Trimmed NURBS
To avoid having to use four-sided patches you can use a a trim curve. This must be specified in the patch's local UV space.
edge
Two vertices can define an edge, which is a straight line between them. Edges are vectors - in other words, they have direction from one vertex to the other.
Ansel Adams
Used a very small aperture to make landscape images where the farthest and nearest objects were all in shape focus
WREQ
W-Move tool E-Rotate tool R-Scale tool Q-Select tool (also used to end current tool operation)
parametrics
What you do when you change the values in this third tab are the original properties of the object when it was created - you're going back in time, as it were - and all the changes you made since are now applied to that revised original object. Every time you apply an operation to the object a new tab is created with the values of what you did, and over time you can end up with dozens of tabs that give you complete control over the object.
Soft selections
When you double-click on the Select, Move, Rotate, or Scale tools and open the dialog box, you'll see an option for Soft Selection. Open that rollout panel and enable Soft Selection. There are a number of options. The first two - Volume and Surface - are for component modeling and will change only the selected object. The second two - Global and Object - are for complete objects and affect the scene. We'll look at each in turn.
Context Menus
When you're in a subobject mode such as Vertex, Edge, or Face, you can access a list of commands specific to that mode by holding down the Shift key and right clicking.
temporal compression
Where sequences of frames are compared and similar areas over that time are reduced to a common element
Lossless Compression
a data compression algorithm that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data.
vertex
a defined point in 3D space, represented by three rational numbers (x, y, z)
edgeloop
a series of edges that flow end to end into one another; often these will go around a polygonal model.
Phong
ambient, diffuse, and specular lighting
Camera scale
basically multiplies the focal length without changing the angle of view and works as a kind of non-physical dollying in or out.
Timeline
below shows its changes in the fourth dimension of time.
aperture
controls the brightness of the image that passes through the lens and falls on the image sensor.
Lossy Compression
data compression techniques in which some amount of data is lost. This technique attempts to eliminate redundant information.
Clip planes
define the range of distances from the camera that will be rendered. If you have a large (or very small) scene and find not everything appearing then one of these values may be the reason. Again, these values can be animated.
Frustum Display Controls
just show or hide the shortened pyramid wireframe that shows the camera's angle of view as well as the near and far clip planes.
non uniform rational b-splines
non uniform: the sections of the curves can be independently edited rational: the control vertices can be given diff weights b-splines: a basis spline made defined by CVs making up a hull
gamma
ppl's perception of brightness is more sensitive to lower levels of illumination
color depth
refers to the number of distinct colors an image can contain
keyboard shortcut 5
show all objects shaded
keyboard shortcut 6
show all objects shaded and textured
keyboard shortcut 7
show all objects shaded and textured using scene lights
Perspective/Orthographic 3D window
shows you a view of your scene in the three dimensions of space
Anisotropic
simulate brushed metal surfaces
parametric editing
the creation parameters of an object can be changed during its existence (up to a point).
focal length
the distance between the center of a lens or curved mirror and its focus.
rendering
the process of making an computational image from a 2d or 3d models
Radiosity
the quality of the object that are subtractive as well as additive.
color gamut
the range of colors that can be displayed by a medium
Polygonal modeling
the simplest method of representing solids and surfaces on a computer.
face(polygon)
three edges define the simplest kind of face, which is called a polygon. A three-sided polygon is always flat, faces one way (defined by its normal), and is called a tri. Faces can also be be made of four edges (called quads) or have more than four sides (called n-gons).
keyboard shortcut 3
view and render poly object only as subdivision surface
keyboard shortcut 4
view and render poly object only as subdivision surface
keyboard shortcut 1
view and render polygonal object as base poly
keyboard shortcut 2
view poly object as wireframe with solid subdivision surface
Spatial Compression
where each frame is individually compressed
